Rafael Alonso
Rafael Alonso graduated in Social Communication with a major in Journalism (2009). He holds a master’s degree (2014) and a PhD (2018) in Literature from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC). In 2017, he was a visiting researcher (as a Capes PDSE fellow) at the Vilém Flusser Archive at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). He has a special interest in epistemological theories that propose to reflect on the different ways in which knowledge is produced, this includes fiction, science, philosophy, image theories and the relationship between literature and the other arts. He was a professor of cinema, journalism, publicity and propaganda and graphic design at Unisociesc in Joinville and a substitute professor of literary theory in Portuguese Letters at the Federal University of Santa Catarina. Currently, he lives in Berlin and is working on editing his first book on Flusser, to be published in the second half of this year.
Articles of Rafael Alonso
Suponhamos: cenários para uma ética flusseriana / Suppose that: Scenarios for a Flusserian Ethics
This essay focuses on the formal aspects of Flusser’s Angenommen. The first part provides the general outline of the book and the second discusses its relationship to other initiatives by Flusser, both authorial (Vampyroteuthis Infernalis) and collaborative (Joan Fontcuberta’s plants, Louis Bec’s sulfanogrades and Guimarães Rosa’s garças). The third part discusses the ethical dimension of the book especially Flusser’s notion of engagement. The idea is to associate the positions of the two main characters, the terrorist and the futurologist, with Flusser’s own situation when he decided to leave Brazil and return to Europe in the early 1970s. Flusser rejects engagement (the terrorist) and scientific theory (the futurologist), but also seems to suggest that the third position – that of the artist –, the ideal synthesis, is not yet given. The artist’s situation has no place, it is improbable, but it is not utopian - without topos. Utopia is next to science fiction. It is a projection of an imaginary world that does not serve as knowledge. Flusser’s focus, in Angenommen and other works is on the improbability of love, or, as he points out in a letter to Mira Schendel, on aisthesis as a method of political criticism. Flusser's ethics have not yet reached the present.